


It's all funny until....

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: 1_million_words, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: Written for a weekend challenge on the 1_million_words comm - the challenge being the "Tarzan" quote, "Whoa! Okay. It's all fun and games till someone loses an eye."





	It's all funny until....

**Author's Note:**

> I would have written more of an actual ending to this ficlet, but I'm in such a rut I'm just happy to have anything to post. Set your sights low and enjoy, I hope.

Danny couldn’t decide which of the feelings rolling through him was churning his blood more: His fear for the health and well being of Steven McGarrett’s left eye, or his anger at said partner for putting himself in a situation where he could have practically, maybe, possibly just gotten it severely injured. 

Not Danny’s first rodeo, riding those particular emotions. But also not what he expected to happen during Charlie’s fourth birthday party.

“Will you please sit down for a second and let me look at it?” Danny was chasing Steve around Danny’s kitchen table; Steve marching in circles, hissing out his pain, a kitchen towel full of hastily-gathered ice cubes pressed to it. 

“I will, I will…gimme a minute, Danny, okay? Jeez, it hurt so bad I thought I might puke….”

Danny had been inside wrapping up some of the leftovers, sticking them in the fridge, talking with a couple of the moms from Charlie’s kindergarten class when he’d heard it: Not a shout or a scream but a deeply pained and shocked roar. He was bolting out his back door and running to his yard before he even fully got that it was Steve’s voice - only to see Steve running his way, a hand over his eye, barreling toward him.

The moms had fled the kitchen to reassure the kids - who had immediately stopped playing and were mostly facing the house, now, with big eyes and ashen faces. Grace had popped inside, too, out of concern, but left again looking suspiciously guilty Danny thought.

“Mind telling me what the hell happened out there?” He asked, still chasing him though Steve was slowing down, finally.

“I was in the bouncy house… bouncing.”

“You were _what_?”

“Did I stutter, Danny? I was bouncing and I landed at a funny angle and fell just as this kid, this teeny….tiny girl from his pre-school was hauling herself up and flinging her arms out to start to bounce and…”

“Why the _frickety frack_ were you in the bouncy house?”

“Cause they’re fun, Danny. And because Grace and her friends dared me and….”

Danny glared out toward his back door like somehow that might reach Grace, who was clearly well shot of them for good reason.

“I knew I never should have rented that thing. Did I not specifically say someone was gonna put an eye out if I got a goddamn bouncy house for the party?”

“You did. Okay? I know you did. I’ll be all right. I’m pretty sure… I think…. I’m okay. It’s not like my eyeball’s hanging out or anything. At least it doesn’t feel… can you… if I pull this away will you take a… look?”

“C’mere, c’mere…” 

Steve stopped, finally, leaning his hip against the sink and dropping down a little over it so Danny could get a good look. But then the makeshift ice bag slid away a mere inch and something DID come falling out from behind it, hitting the sink with a sickening, red, wet plop.

Danny felt his body fly away from Steve, screeching - so loud and frantically that he barely recognized his own voice, his arms flying up around his own head in horror until….

“You ….rat _bastard_ ,” Danny slapped the now grimly chuckling Steve on the arm, hard enough to make a snapping sound. “You fucking jerk…”

Steve was shaking with a mix of mirth and pain, the ice bag still firmly in place.

“C’mon, admit it… that was a good one, Danno.”

“Did you seriously snag a grape tomato from the table, smash it in your palm and carry it around for the last two minutes waiting for the opportunity to scare the hell out of me?”

“Yes. But In my defense I’m hurting. You screaming like a twelve year old took it off my mind for a few seconds. That was… one hell of a frightened little boy scream, there, buddy….”

“Sit down at the table, you moron. Let me take a damn. Look. At your eye.”

“Okay, okay…” Steve went the few steps and sat with a groan that broke Danny’s heart. Not that he was admitting it to him anytime soon.

“How bad is it?” Steve dropped his hand and Danny saw him gazing up, looking for information and maybe some comfort.

“Well, you’ve got a huge shiner,” Danny moved around to look at it from all angles. “Your eye is red as a Christmas bulb but it … I think it looks okay. We’re taking you to the hospital, of course.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Shut up. Let me… “

“No, Danny, don’t…. don’t touch it.”

“We gotta see if she broke your cheekbone. Or that.. what’s the word, the…”

“Eye socket?”

“Yeah, that. Hold on, and …let me. I’ll be gentle, just… let me…”

“When have I heard that from you before?”

“Shut up. The kids are ten yards away.”

Danny held the heel of his left hand to Steve’s forehead to brace him and ran his right thumb lightly, extra gently over the purple bruise under his eye. Steve didn’t jump through the ceiling, so he did it again and pressed ever so lightly. 

“Ow…fuck, yeah, okay…maybe… maybe I’ve gotta….go have it checked.”

Steve giving in that way made Danny's worry mode kick back in.

“I’ll get my keys.”

“No, there’s no reason you have to leave the party. I can go. I’ll drive myself.” 

“Excuse me?”

“I said I’ll drive myself.”

“And get in a car crash because you’re driving with one good eye?”

“Point taken.”

-*-

“You hurting much?” He asked him as they sat in the triage area.

It had only been an hour and a half, but it felt like six. It was a shock finding out how long most people had to wait for an emergency doc when neither of you had been shot, poisoned, beaten half to death by perps, or thrown to the tarmac by an explosion.

“Yeah,” Steve’s voice had a fair amount of ‘no shit’ in it. “I am. But I’ve had it worse. You know?”

Danny nodded briefly - enough to acknowledge that yes, he certainly did. Then he watched Steve for a minute in the seat next to him: resting his head back lightly against the wall, eyes falling closed, the shiner a darker purple than when they’d walked in. It would go yellow and even a little green before it healed.

Steve never said anything, but Danny knew it bothered him, his bruises showing - any wound of his being too visible to the world. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Danny searched for the best words to keep the thought that was growing in his head simple. “Down the road, when the current girlfriends are out of the picture? That should be …it. No more. For either of us.”

“You think so, huh?” Steve barely opened his eyes and lifted his head to ask the question, then sank right back.

“Not the reaction I was hoping for, but… it’s better than a grunt and a shrug so I guess I should feel honored.”

“You’re only feeling that way ‘cause I’m injured, Danny. Something happens to remind you we could lose each other and suddenly you think maybe you want more than us screwing around between relationships. Give it a week… you’ll be bitching at me for looking at a piece of paper on your desk. For thinking your retirement has anything to do with me. Telling me… in your own way… that I’m just your work partner.”

“Feel better, getting that off your chest? That… was a load, my friend. Must feel…”

“Stop it.”

“…five pounds lighter. And you’re wrong, I don’t do that. I don’t go back and forth on what you mean to me.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Maybe he did. Danny wasn’t up for examining that accusation too closely at the moment.

“Well, whatever has happened in the past… this time I think it’s about more than a black eye in a bouncy house. It’s about us having planned this whole party together. You being at my place with the kids as much as I’m at yours lately. It’s … us opening a damn restaurant together which, may I remind you, we are up to our very busy elbows renovating, and… I think it’s time we go all in.”

“Are you serious?” Steve only glanced his way, but Danny could feel he had his full attention now. “No more girlfriends, no more… Rachel? Ever?”

“Exactly. Just us, that’s it. That’s the relationship…. us.”

“You understand that’ll mean actually letting me have a say in your decisions? Instead of you pretending to, when you ordered the garnet already? And also... it means telling people about us. You get that, right?”

The look on Steve’s face when Danny broke out laughing at the question? Danny had seen confusion like that from him many a time, but it was still pretty funny.

“Steven, we won’t have to say squat to anyone. We could go from house to house for years. We could sell ‘em both and live over the restaurant, even send out wedding invitations someday and I’m pretty sure no one will so much as comment on it except to RSVP for the reception.”

“Huh,” Steve was shifting around in his chair like he was thinking about ten things at once. “You proposed to me in a hospital. Kind of makes sense, the amount of time we spend here..”

“That was not a proposal. Any proposal that may be forthcoming, it’s… a long way off, okay?”

“And what if I propose to you?”

“I’m the one who gets to do the asking. Know why? I’m the one who’s been through it; who knows how marriage changes things, and what living in divorce hell is like. You have no clue. So if and when the question gets popped…. what the hell are you laughing at?”

“That scream out of you an hour ago. I wish I’d gotten it on video.”

“Why the hell would anyone be videotaping that moment?” Danny snapped, but he found his hand reaching for Steve’s, holding it as Steve held his own forehead with his free hand like it hurt to even laugh. “This is why you need to retire: You got taken down by a four year old, Steve. In a kids’ bouncy house, at that.”

“I love you, too, Danny.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Isn’t it?”


End file.
